NAIROBI, KENYA — Local fund managers showed little interest in a private placement by an Ethiopian investment bank for lack of knowledge of investment opportunities in the country.
Access Capital, based in Addis Ababa, sought to raise between Sh800 million and Sh1.2bn to fund investments in real estate and financial services in its home country, according to arranging agency Kestrel Capital.
However, Kenyan fund managers shied away, highlighting the weakening global economy and a preference for other regional markets where they have knowledge of operations.
“Some Kenyan investors may invest on a limited scale but may not commit to any significant amount primarily for regulatory reasons but also due to the conservative nature of Kenyan investment managers and trustees with regard to investing outside Kenya,” said Mr Andre Desimone, the executive director Kestrel Capital which has had a strategic partnership with the Addis Ababa based bank.
With local investors staying away, UK based private equity funds showed a huge appetite for the opportunity, highlighting high risk in the unregulated capital markets which do not yet exist in Ethiopia.
“Major interest is from UK based private equity funds, but smaller interest also from US, and Kenya,” said Mr Desimone, adding that in total they had seven foreign investor groups with the possibility of at least two of them taking up the whole offer.
People familiar with the deal said investors are required to part with a minimum of Sh80 million in the private placement that closed at the end of last month. A private placement involves the sale of shares to a limited number of investors such as pension schemes, insurance firms and mutual funds.
With a Sh1.2 billion funding war chest, Access Capital, which has heavy investments in consumer products and packaging industries, is looking at diversifying into sectors such real estate and financial services.
This marked the first opportunity for local fund managers to invest in Ethiopia, a market that Kenyan investors have given a wide berth as many prefer to invest in Rwanda and Uganda.
Reduced interest
Fund managers interviewed by Business Daily said the fund is likely to receive cold reception from the local investor community. Still, the absence of a functioning stock market in Ethiopia is emerging as a concern to local investors, who foresee difficulties in existing from the investments. Ethiopia at one time had a functioning stock market but was closed down due to civil strife and reduced investor interest.
“We have in the past explored Uganda and Tanzania but Ethiopia is not in the radar of many people because its hard to exit given it does not have a stock exchange,” said John Wakiumu head of fund management and research at Amana Capital in an earlier interview with the Business Daily.
At a time when business in horticulture, particularly flowers, is highly threatened by the global economic downturn, Freesia Ethiopia, a joint venture by Ethiopian and Dutch businesspeople has joined the scene.
The official inauguration of the flower farm with 15hct green in Sululta area of North Shoa Zone, Oromia Regional State was held on March 28, 2009. Its shareholders, Samrawit Moges, Thomas Mattanovich, Ronald Vijverberg, vDijkn Hofland, Alex Barendse and Matthieu Barendse formed the joint venture in July 2007 with an initial capital of 18 million Br.
The new entrant to the horticulture scene secured start up finance from the Private Sector Investment Program (PSIP), a Netherlands government’s programme meant to stimulate investment in emerging economies and developing countries of Africa, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe, Matthieu Barendse, general manager of Freesia Ethiopia, told Fortune.
Though rose growers do not prefer the cold weather of the area where the new flower farm is found, it seems to be ideal for freesia; the 21°C – 22°C day time and the 3°C-5°C night time temperatures are perfect for the plant with fragrant flowers, according to the General Manager. The flat terrain of the area convinced the flower growers that they would succeed in their business.
“We had the feeling that the project will be even more successful when we use better materials,” said Barendse. Thus, Freesia Ethiopia has invested in a modern greenhouse with machinery for cultivation, heating and steaming the soil making their own borehole for fresh water and application of economical and environmental fertilizers and pesticides, the owners claim.
The joint venture, which has more than 80 people who are directly employed on the farm, has also partnered with a local company, Chancho Plc. The partnership is based on an arrangement in which Chancho Plc provides land and utilizes local knowledge of the country, the culture and the government, where as Freesia Ethiopia brings in knowledge of cultivation, labour and techniques.
Freesia Ethiopia envisions that from 2010 onwards, it will expand its flowers and bulbs production by one to two hectares of greenhouse per year, and further to 10hct within the following five years. It will have a yearly investment of four million Br. Production of freesia flowers and bulbs by 2013 will rise to 25 million and 18 million per year, respectively. The company anticipates having more than 200 employees by then.
European retail markets and Middle Eastern consumers are the targeted buyers for the flowers bulbs.
LILONGWE, Malawi (AP) — Madonna’s efforts to adopt two youngsters from Malawi have put her in the media spotlight. But she isn’t alone: a growing number of Americans are bringing home children from Africa as countries like China and Russia cut back on adoptions by foreigners.
Actress Angelina Jolie with her adopted Ethiopian child
The increase — particularly in Ethiopia — comes as the AIDS epidemic ravaging the continent leaves more orphans in impoverished countries without relatives to care for them.
Americans adopted 1,725 Ethiopian children in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2008, about 70 percent of all U.S. adoptions from Africa, according to the State Department. The year before, 1,255 Ethiopian children were adopted by Americans.
While experts don’t attribute Africa’s growing popularity among adoptive parents to a celebrity factor, they do say high-profile adoptions by the likes of Madonna and Angelina Jolie have raised awareness of the availability of orphans on the continent.
“One of the good things about the Madonna adoption or Angelina Jolie, those adoptions brought the need to the attention of Europeans or Americans,” said Thomas DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children’s Services. “And it brought the possibility (of adopting in Africa) to people’s attention.”
Wes Stout, 41, who with his wife Kristin, 37, has adopted two children from Ethiopia agrees.
“I give some of the popularity of Ethiopia to her celebrity influence,” he said of Jolie, whose daughter, Zahara, was adopted from the north African country in 2005, the same year the Stouts adopted their daughter, 3-year-old Kylia.
At that time, the Stouts’ wait was less than a year. When they brought their son, 9-month-old Solomon, home six weeks ago, it was after an adoption process that took two years.
“The popularity soared,” said Stout of Redwood, California.
And, “while in the end the need is great, for most people who adopt, they are not just adopting to save a life,” he said. “They are adopting to start a family and that’s an important point.”
Rich foreigners have been adopting children from poorer nations for decades. Mia Farrow, now the mother of 14, began adopting children from Asia in 1973, with an orphan from the Vietnam War. In addition to her daughter Zahara, Jolie adopted her sons Maddox and Pax from Cambodia and Vietnam.
But critics have slammed Madonna’s efforts to adopt a second child from Malawi this week, accusing her of acting like a rich “bully” and using her money and status to fast-track the adoption process. On Tuesday, Madonna insisted she was following standard procedures.
Many adoption agencies and child rights activists also argue it is preferable for children to be taken care of by relatives or their communities, with foreign adoptions allowed only as a last resort.
Others say that isn’t always realistic. “Ideally more local adoptions would be best, but people aren’t coming forward and if life is better out there then they should take it,” said Zoe Cohen, a private adoption consultant in South Africa.
And while adoptions from Africa have risen, the continent still accounts for only about 14 percent of overseas adoptions by Americans. According to the State Department, 2,399 visas were issued to African children adopted by Americans last year, out of 17,438 adoptions from abroad.
Adoptions overseas have plummeted overall in the U.S., dropping 12 percent last year to the lowest level since 1999. That’s due to developments in China, Russia, Guatemala and other longtime sources of orphans that have reduced the number of foreign adoptions.
China accounted for the biggest decline, dropping out of the top spot last year. It was replaced by Guatemala, which almost certainly will lose that status in 2009 because of a freeze on new adoptions imposed because of fraud allegations.
Elsewhere in the West, adoptions from Africa have grown, notably in France, where the continent accounted for nearly a third of the 3,271 overseas adoptions last year. By comparison, only a handful of African children were adopted in Britain in 2007, the last year statistics were available. Most youngsters came from Ethiopia and Nigeria — seven from Ethiopia and six from Nigeria.
Orphans usually are taken in by their extended families in Africa, but AIDS and other diseases have taken a toll on those who might have traditionally provided support. In villages across the continent, frail elderly grandmothers do their best to care for children, but many end up in orphanages or on the streets.
The United Nations estimates 18 million African children will have lost a parent to AIDS by 2010.
Simon Chisale, the Malawian official handling Madonna’s adoptions, said outsiders are being considered as adoptive parents because traditional family structures have broken down.
“Times have changed,” he said. “It used to be simpler but now it is more difficult. People have the heart (to look after their extended families) but the means are not there.”
Malawi, with a population of 12 million, is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure. The U.N. says 1 million Malawian children have lost one or both parents, about half of them to AIDS.
In the face of such problems, experts say few African countries are going to turn down help from well-meaning rich foreigners. Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity, for example, is building well-equipped schools.
DiFilipo, whose agency works to help shape adoption policy, warns that adoptions by foreigners can have unintended consequences. For instance, wealthy foreigners often make donations to the orphanages where they find their children, leading orphanages to look for foreign placements because they need donations.
But, DiFilipo said, the solution is not to stop foreign adoptions but to strengthen laws and education. He cited Malawi as an example.
Malawian regulations now require prospective parents to be resident in the country for 18 to 24 months, during which time welfare officials assess their suitability — a rule that was bent when Madonna was allowed to take her adopted son, David, to London in 2006 before his adoption was finalized.
A draft children’s law, expected to be enacted later this year, seeks to address shortcomings in the current legislation, including setting limits on how many children an individual can adopt from Malawi and the interval between each adoption.
A clear legal framework making adoption relatively easy is one of the reasons cited for the adoption boom in Ethiopia, where there are 800,000 AIDS orphans. Ethiopia also allows unmarried women to adopt children.
Chisale said there has been a slight increase in interest in adopting children from Malawi, mainly among the many international aid workers there.
He could not provide numbers and was reluctant to attribute this to attention drawn by Madonna’s case, but couldn’t deny the enormous influence the star has had. “Madonna has put Malawi on the map,” he said.
(Associated Press writers Carley Petesch in New York, Donna Bryson and Stuart Moir in Johannesburg, Jill Lawless in London, Katharine Houreld and Anita Powell in Nairobi, Kenya, and Scott Sayare in Paris contributed to this report.)
Zelalem Yilma, right, pours coffee during Sunday’s Ethiopian coffee ceremony at The Burke Museum. Yilma and others hosting the event described the Ethiopian coffee ritual as a way for their people to socialize, gossip, discuss news and politics and share culture. [Photo: ERIKA SCHULTZ | THE SEATTLE TIMES]
SEATTLE, USA — The opposite of instant coffee is not a nice, slow French press. It is a centuries-old coffee ritual from Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.
Stepping inside on Seattle’s most gorgeous day so far this year, a few dozen visitors to the Burke Museum participated in the ceremony Sunday. They chatted and sipped Ethiopian coffee roasted before their eyes by three native Ethiopians who enjoy sharing the ritual with fellow Seattleites.
Zelalem Yilma began by roasting green coffee beans over a burner while Yobi Guma gave visitors a snack of roasted barley with peanuts. Grass was spread on the ground to encourage abundance or fertility, and incense burned to drive away bad spirits, or as a religious symbol for Christians.
As the coffee began to crackle and smell good, Yilma added cardamom, cinnamon and cloves to the roast while Menkeli Kanaa talked with visitors who sat in a semicircle facing the women.
Women traditionally lead Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, and these particular women — who have full-time jobs at a university, a school district and a hedge fund — have led them for people at Starbucks, Seattle’s Best Coffee and fundraising auctions.
The slow, socially oriented ritual is a daily part of life in Ethiopia, where families and friends spend the time gossiping, learning and solving problems.
It is such an integral part of Ethiopian life that common turns of phrase are based on it. To say “I don’t have someone to have coffee with” in Ethiopia means you do not have a friend, Kanaa said. “And your mom will say, don’t let your name get noticed at coffee time” as a caution to watch your reputation.
The ritual moves slowly, as people warm to each other and join in the conversation. “Once you get in the spirit of it, you don’t want to leave,” Kanaa said.
On Sunday, the women answered questions and talked about the meaning of coffee rituals in their lives, their sometimes tragic family histories, and the difficulty that the farmer who grew the beans they were drinking has had exporting his coffee because of a new auction system in Ethiopia.
Yilma roasted the coffee to medium brown, which she said gives the best flavor. “In stores they have dark, dark coffee. I don’t like that. I like it when it’s brown.”
She then ground the coffee and brewed it in a jebena, a traditional metal brewing pot. The rich, sweet brew was served in small glass cups without handles, and guests could add their own sugar or salt. In some parts of Ethiopia, coffee drinkers add butter or honey. They also snack on popcorn and a recipe using the red cherry fruit that holds the coffee seeds.
Sunday’s first group of visitors got through two rounds of coffee, the second intentionally weaker than the first, before it was time to let another group participate. In a complete ceremony, a third round would involve even weaker coffee and a blessing.
Gwyn Hinton, who had participated in Ethiopian coffee rituals before, said they always lead to engrossing stories and conversations until suddenly three hours have passed.
“Americans are like, I’ve got to go. And they’re like, so what? It’s been three hours. Let’s sit here another hour,” she said.
The owner of Seattle Coffee Crawl, Vicki Schuman, arrived late after a morning of leading a walking tour of downtown Seattle coffee shops.
“I wanted to see how they did it, and now that I’ve seen it, I want to go to Ethiopia,” she said.
The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture will host another Ethiopian coffee ceremony Sunday, June 7, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
SANA’A, YEMEN (Saba) – Yemeni police in Hudeidah province has captured 9 Ethiopian people for entering Yemen illegally, Media Center of Interior Ministry has reported.
In the meantime, police also captured 17 Ethiopians when they were heading for Hudeidah province.
Police said that they have seized at al-Safiah district two French people aged between 28-30 who don’t have permits to stay in the Yemen, adding that they were referred to the prosecution.
Meanwhile, around 18 Somali refugees, including 4 women, reached Thubab coast in Taiz province and handed them over to the Yemeni Red Crescent to send them later to the main camp at Kharaz in Lahj province.
BAHIR DAR, ETHIOPIA – In Ethiopia, Easter is one of the most important religious festivals of the whole year, signified by the 53 days of fasting that precedes Easter Day itself. During this time, members of the Coptic Christian Church in Ethiopia refrain from eating meat and dairy products and some also fast from alcohol. So coffee is taken black, toast is eaten dry and main meals are made up of grains, pulses and vegetables. Fortunately, the national dish, injera, which is made from teff, a millet-like substance, can easily be eaten with vegetable sauces.
The Sunday before Easter is of course, Palm Sunday, or Hosanna, the day in which Jesus traditionally is said to have ridden into Jerusalem over a carpet of palm leaves thrown by the people. As in other Catholic churches, palm leaves are given out to the congregation and in Ethiopia some of the more devout Christians fashion these leaves into a crown, which they wear until Easter Sunday, as a symbolic crown of thorns.
On Good Friday, which is a public holiday in Ethiopia, the churches are packed with people, many standing outside listening to the amplified voice of the priest. A few go to church on Thursday, the night of the ‘Last Supper’ and remain there until Sunday, maintaining a vigil over a symbolic tomb of Christ. On Easter eve, the Saturday before Easter Sunday, church services begin at 7.00 p.m. in the evening and continue until three or four in the morning. Then the worshipers go home and break the fast, either starting their feast or, after sleeping for a few hours, beginning their feast on the following day.
In the SOS Children’s Villages in Ethiopia, Easter morning is an exciting time, as sheep or chickens are slaughtered and prepared for the injera feast that will take place that day. After the animal has been skinned and cut up the mothers and aunties cook it slowly over a fire. Once it is cooked each family eats meat, sauces and injera from a communal plate, as is tradition, using hands rather than cutlery. (Because Ethiopians eat with their hands, they are very hygiene conscious and wash their hands before, during and after a meal.) The meat from the slaughtered animal is often enough to ensure that the family continue eating it throughout the week – a well deserved feast after a very long fast.
At a time when business in horticulture, particularly flowers, is highly threatened by the global economic downturn, Freesia Ethiopia, a joint venture by Ethiopian and Dutch businesspeople has joined the scene.
SANA’A, YEMEN (Saba) – Yemeni police in Hudeidah province has captured 9 Ethiopian people for entering Yemen illegally, Media Center of Interior Ministry has reported.
BAHIR DAR, ETHIOPIA – In Ethiopia, Easter is one of the most important religious festivals of the whole year, signified by the 53 days of fasting that precedes Easter Day itself. During this time, members of the Coptic Christian Church in Ethiopia refrain from eating meat and dairy products and some also fast from alcohol. So coffee is taken black, toast is eaten dry and main meals are made up of grains, pulses and vegetables. Fortunately, the national dish, injera, which is made from teff, a millet-like substance, can easily be eaten with vegetable sauces.